Members
Peter van Koppen
Annelies Vredeveldt
Jasper van der Kemp
André De Zutter
Tanja van Veldhuizen
Maarten Bolhuis
Fenia Ferra
Dylan Drenk
Gabi de Bruïne
Eva van Rosmalen
Maria Shenouda
Fellows
Guillaume Beijers
Henk Elffers
Robert Horselenberg
Jan de Keijser
Linda Kesteloo
Ricardo Nieuwkamp
Claire van den Eeden
Sophie van der Zee
Laura Weiss
Simon Oleszkiewicz
Marika Madfors
Verena Muckermann
Krista King
Members
Peter van Koppen
Em. Prof. Peter J. van Koppen was full professor of Legal Psychology at the Faculty of Law of VU University Amsterdam from 2003 to 2019. He studied psychology in Groningen (class of 1978; personality psychology and psychometrics) and law in Groningen and Amsterdam (class of 1977). He obtained his JD in 1984 at the Faculty of Law of the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
He is a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He is editor of the international journal Psychology, Crime, and Law (since 1992). He is a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Wassenaar (1986-1987 and 1990-1991). He was a member of the Governing Board of the Netherlands Register of Court Experts from 2010 until 2018. Together with D.J. Hessing, Van Koppen took the initiative to found the Criminology departments at Leiden University, VU University Amsterdam, and Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is Past-President of the European Association for Psychology and Law.
Van Koppen published, next to some 40 books, 150 articles and 120 chapters in edited volumes. In 2011, he received the Publication Prize of the Stichting Maatschappij Veiligheid en Politie (Foundation Society, Safety and Police) for his monograph Overtuigend bewijs: Indammen van rechterlijke dwalingen (Convincing Evidence: Limiting Miscarriages of Justice). More recently, he published Gerede twijfel: Over bewijs in strafzaken (Reasonable Doubt: On Evidence in Criminal Cases; 2013) and Routes van het Recht (Routes of Justice; 2017, edited with Jan W. de Keijser, Robert Horselenberg and Marco Jelicic). In 2014, he was awarded the Tom Williamson Award for life time achievement by the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG). In 2016, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL).
Annelies Vredeveldt
Dr. Annelies Vredeveldt is an Associate Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. She graduated summa cum laude from University College Utrecht in 2007 and won the University College Alumni Association Award for social involvement and academic excellence. She obtained her Masters degree in Psychology and Law from Maastricht University in 2008, where she received the Top 3% Award. She completed her Ph.D. thesis on the effects of eye-closure on eyewitness memory at the University of York in 2011, for which she received both the American Psychology-Law Society Dissertation Award (first place) and the British Psychological Society – Social Psychology Section PhD Award.
Vredeveldt is an expert in the area of memory in legal settings. Her research focuses mainly on eyewitness memory, investigative interviewing, police reports, cross-cultural testimony, face recognition and deception detection. She has obtained funding for her research from various sources, including an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council, a Branco Weiss Fellowship from the Society in Science in Switzerland, and grants from the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group in the United States and the Police and Science programme in the Netherlands. She has published about twenty peer-reviewed scientific articles, four books and six book chapters on legal psychological topics. Her work has been featured in international outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today and Life Hacker, and in major Dutch news outlets such as De Volkskrant, Algemeen Dagblad, Elsevier and NOS.
Vredeveldt regularly serves as an expert witness in criminal cases. She serves on advisory committees of the Netherlands Register of Court Experts, to establish standards and assess applications for registration as an expert witness in the field of Legal Psychology. She is also course coordinator of Project Reasonable Doubt, in which groups of students investigate the evidence in closed criminal cases.
Jasper van der Kemp
Dr. Jasper J. van der Kemp, a legal psychologist and investigative criminologist, became assistant professor at the VU School of Criminology, Department of Criminal Law & Criminology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in January 2006. Previously he conducted research at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcements (NSCR), being part of the research group on ‘Mobility and Distribution of Crime’ for five years. His PhD research on the modus via and fine-tuning of geographical offender profiling extended from analyzing individual offenders’ movements and location choice to the geographical patterns of crime in the criminal careers of property offenders. The main focus of this work addresses issues relating to geographical offender profiling and investigative focus on the modus via. In 2005 van der Kemp and colleagues won the Wiley Poster Price at the 15th European Conference on Psychology and Law for their poster presentation: “X marks the spot, comparing police officers, students and geographical profiling software on the accuracy of their predictions”.
He currently teaches ‘Crime Analysis & Offender Profiling’ and ‘Spatial Criminology’ courses as well as being the initiator of a training course Geographical Crime Analysis for police analysts. Van der Kemp is the coordinator of the Forensic Criminology minor curriculum of the bachelor Criminology program and member of the Master Criminology committee.
His current research focuses on the behavioral aspects of crime scene investigations and reconstructions and the use of crime scenarios in investigative decision making. Van der Kemp was the research project coordinator of the ‘Better crime scene investigations with lab-on-a-chip-technology’ project. Van der Kemp is founding member of the Crime Linkage International Network (C-Link); an academic-practitioner collaboration for studying the linkage of crimes on the behavioral characteristics. He is consulted by the police in ongoing and cold cases to create geographical analyses or to inform police investigative strategies. Van der Kemp is supervisor at Project Gerede Twijfel and Cold Cases in which groups of students investigate the evidence in closed criminal cases or cold cases.
André De Zutter
Dr. André W.E.A. De Zutter is a legal psychologist. He works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of the Faculty of Law at VU University Amsterdam. He studied psychology at Maastricht University, where he graduated with a research master in psychopathology, specializing in psychology and law. In 2018, he obtained his Ph.D. from Maastricht University. In his Ph.D. research, he investigated the difference between true and fabricated allegations of rape. He regularly serves as an expert witness in criminal cases.
Tanja van Veldhuizen
Dr. Tanja van Veldhuizen is a legal psychologist. Since April 2020, she works as an Assistant Professor at the department of Criminal Law and Criminology and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research interests lie with investigative interviewing, evidence assessment, and cross-cultural processes within different legal contexts. She uses both qualitative and quantitative (and experimental) research methods.
Tanja studied social psychology at Utrecht University (2008-2013). During this time, she was awarded the best paper award at the 2011 annual conference of the Dutch Association of Social Psychological Researchers (ASPO) for her paper about cultural differences in terror management. Between 2013 and 2017, she conducted her PhD research at Maastricht University and the University of Gothenburg within the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate House of Legal Psychology. In her dissertation, she studied credibility assessments in European asylum procedures. Today, she regularly gives lectures, workshops, and training on this topic to practitioners in different countries, ranging from NGO representatives to asylum adjudicators and refugee law judges. She is also listed in the expert-roster of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). In 2015, she was awarded the best presentation award at the annual conference of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG) in London for a presentation about her PhD research.
After obtaining her PhD, Tanja worked as a postdoctoral researcher within the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice at Utrecht University and additionally was involved as research support staff in a study about undesirable behaviour and social safety within the Dutch armed forces for an independent committee appointed by the Ministry of Defence. From 2018-2020 she gained teaching experience as a lecturer in Criminology at Leiden University.
Maarten Bolhuis
Dr. Maarten Bolhuis is assistant professor of criminology at the Faculty of Law of VU Amsterdam, where he has worked since 2012. He is a graduate in criminology and political science at VU Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. His main research interests lie at the crossroads of international crimes and terrorism, and irregular migration. He is particularly interested in the situation of immigrants who are undesirable because of (alleged) criminality, but who cannot be returned or deported from the host country (undesirable but unreturnable aliens). He has obtained research funding from different sources, including the Dutch and Norwegian governments and the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. At the ALLP, he has been a supervisor in the ‘Gerede Twijfel’ project since 2019. Maarten is also programme coordinator of the MSc programme ‘International Crimes, Conflict & Criminology’, and board member at the Center for International Criminal Justice (CICJ).
Fenia Ferra
Dr. Fenia Ferra works as a researcher at the Department of Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. Her project focuses on how to incorporate insights about culture into investigative interviewing methods. She has obtained her PhD in Psychology from the University of Sheffield, UK. Her PhD thesis focused on interviewing of child witnesses in Greece. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK), at the Cyber Security Institute, on projects focusing on cybercrime victimisation and interviewing, and Rostock University Medical Centre (Germany), at the Clinic of Forensic Psychiatry, on a Robert Bosch Stiftung funded project on the use of participatory research approaches in the field of forensic mental health. She has also worked as a lecturer in forensic psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Derby, UK. Additionally, Fenia has spent some time working with the European Asylum Support Office (now known as EUAA) and Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Lesvos, Greece. Her main research interests include investigative interviewing (with a special focus on children and vulnerable witnesses), asylum interviews, trauma, and community involvement in research.
Dylan Drenk
Dylan Drenk is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law at the VU University Amsterdam. His project focuses on eyewitness evidence provided at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Dylan completed his Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology at Maastricht University. Prior to his start at VU, Dylan worked as a consultant Psychosocial Expert at the International Criminal Court (ICC) where he provided expert advice and support for interviewing vulnerable witnesses and victims. He has provided trainings to international organizations on subjects such as interviewing children, working cross-culturally, secondary trauma, and witness management. He previously worked as a Psychologist for the Victims and Witnesses Section of the ICC where he conducted research on witness well-being during international criminal trials. Dylan will be supervised by ALLP co-founder Annelies Vredeveldt and CICJ co-director Barbora Hola.
Gabi de Bruïne
Gabi de Bruïne is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law at the VU University Amsterdam. Her project is focused on experimental comparisons of statements made by different cultural groups. Gabi completed two Master’s degrees at VU University Amsterdam, one in Criminology and one in International Crimes and Criminology. As part of her Master’s thesis, Gabi investigated cross-cultural differences in object recognition, comparing asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa to a matched Western control group. The findings of her research were published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. Furthermore, Gabi has worked on a Rwandan legal case as part of Project Reasonable Doubt. Within the project she analysed a large number of statements from Rwandan genocide survivors. She is interested in witness statements in cross-cultural contexts and has a passion for the African continent, where she spent six months during her bachelor. Gabi is supervised by Annelies Vredeveldt and Peter van Koppen.
Eva van Rosmalen
Eva van Rosmalen works as a researcher and lecturer at the department of Criminology at the VU University Amsterdam. She has previously worked as an academic teacher and trainer in Psychology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and at Utrecht University. After completing her bachelor’s in Psychology in Rotterdam, she studied Legal Psychology at Maastricht University. For her master thesis, she investigated the effects of MDMA on false memories of eyewitnesses in a legal context. Together with dr. Annelies Vredeveldt, she works on projects about eyewitness collaboration, expert witnesses and consistency as a cue to deception.
Maria Shenouda
Maria Shenouda works as a junior researcher at the Department of Criminology, Faculty of Law at VU Amsterdam. She did her bachelor’s in psychology at Leiden University, where she specialized in Clinical Psychology and Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Following that, she completed her master’s in legal psychology at Maastricht University. Her master’s thesis focused on survivors of intimate partner violence (with a deeper look into coercive control) and the possibility of secondary victimization with the Dutch family court. Currently, she is working with Dr. Annelies Vredeveldt and her team on projects related to witness statements and eyewitness evidence in cross-cultural contexts. Maria’s main research interests include investigative interviewing, eyewitness testimonies, and the effect of trauma on memory.
Fellows
Guillaume Beijers
Guillaume M.E.H. Beijers was coordinator and lecturer Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. After retiring, he remained active as Senior Research Fellow at the Criminology section. Guillaume is sociologist and methodologist. His teaching predominantly concerned Methods and Statistics of Criminological Research and Statistics. As a scientific researcher, he conducted policy research on criminological and legal sociological issues for decades. Since 2006 he has served as supervisor on Project Reasonable Doubt.
Henk Elffers
Emeritus Professor Henk Elffers graduated in mathematical statistics at the University of Amsterdam and got his Ph.D. in Psychology of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam on a thesis on Income Tax Evasion. He held various research appointments at Mathematisch Centrum Amsterdam, now CWI (statistics), University of Utrecht (geography), Erasmus University Rotterdam (socio-legal studies) and University of Antwerp (law and psychology). He is currently a senior-researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and emeritus professor of empirical research into criminal law enforcement at VU University Amsterdam, department of Criminal Law and Criminology, and an adjunct professor at Griffith University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Brisbane). His research interest encompasses rational choice theory of criminal decision making, guardianship, simulation methods in criminology, public opinion and the judiciary, expert evidence in criminal courts, mutual influence of judges and public opinion, judges’ argumentation for punishment modality and severity.
Robert Horselenberg
Dr. Robert Horselenberg is a legal psychologist at Maastricht University. He defended his thesis on false memories and false confessions in May 2005. Since then, he has worked as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and later at the Faculty of Law, both at Maastricht University. His research focusses on interviewing children, eyewitnesses and suspects, and on reasoning with evidence. He publishes on these topics both nationally and internationally. He acts as an expert witness in about ten criminal cases a year. He is a member of the European Association of Psychology and Law, where he is also a member of the Board. Furthermore, he is a member of the international Investigative Interviewing Research Group. In this latter group, he acts as editor of their journal. He is also a member of their executive committee. Since 2013, he is an expert in the Dutch Expert group for Special Vice-cases. He is also reviewer for several international and national journals and co-editor of the book Routes van het Recht, the Dutch handbook on legal psychology. Moreover, he is an initiator of The House of Legal Psychology, as well as a member of the management team and program director. He lectures on various courses at bachelor and master level in legal psychology, and started the Cold Case project in Maastricht in 2012. As a guest lecturer he visits several universities throughout the Netherlands and Europe. He acts as an expert in the media – radio, television, and newspapers – on a regular basis.
Jan de Keijser
Prof. Jan de Keijser is professor of Criminology at the Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology at Leiden University. He teaches psychology & law and penology. He is board memebr of the Dutch Registry of Court Experts (NRGD) and provides training and teaching at the Dutch Forensic Institute (NFI) and at the Training and Study Centre for the Judiciary (SSR). In 2000 he got his Ph.D. (cum laude) at Leiden university focusing on consistency in sentencing in relation to the goals and functions of punishment. His research interests are connected to the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. These interests include proof and punishment, forensic evidence, public opinion towards punishment, confidence in the criminal justice system, and the communication between forensic experts and the courts. He published books and articles on these topics in both national and international journals.
Linda Kesteloo
Linda Kesteloo, LL.M., is Lecturer/Researcher criminal (procedural) law at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. In 2013, she was awarded the NWO grant ‘Research talent’ for her Ph.D. project. Her research addresses safeguards for witness reliability from a legal perspective. In 2016, she collaborated with Annelies Vredeveldt and Peter van Koppen on a research project about the influence of collaboration between police officers on the content of police reports. She is currently working with Annelies Vredeveldt on the Bodycams research project.
Ricardo Nieuwkamp
Dr. Ricardo Nieuwkamp, LL.M, is a legal psychologist. He holds a Bachelor in Psychology and Neuroscience, a Master in Psychology and Law and a Master in Forensics, Criminology and Law, all from Maastricht University. During his studies he was selected for the Maastricht Research Based Learning (MaRBLe) program, did an internship at TMFI, worked for the NSCR and participated in Project Reasonable Doubt as a student and later as a supervisor. He also assisted expert witnesses in the analysis and reporting of cases on a regular basis. In his PhD research, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), he studied the believability of suspects’ alibis. For his oral presentation of one of his studies, he won the third price for the best oral presentation at the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL) conference in 2014, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. He publishes in national and international journals about this topic and provides guest lectures about legal psychology in the Netherlands and in Belgium. From August 2015 until October 2016 he worked as a researcher at KU Leuven to determine the best practices of suspect interviewing in an international context in the context of a Horizon 2020 research project. Since October 2016 he is a researcher within the knowledge centre of Vias institute in Brussels. He is also affiliated with the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology in Brussels.
Claire van den Eeden
Dr. Claire A.J. van den Eeden is a legal psychologist. She studied cognitive psychology in Maastricht, where she also completed her masters in Psychology and Law. Until recently she was a PhD student at the Research Group Forensic Science at the Dutch Police Academy and the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. For her dissertation, she studied the influence of information on the forensic investigation at the crime scene.
Sophie van der Zee
Dr. Sophie van der Zee is senior researcher at the National Rapporteur Trafficking in Human Beings and Sexual Violence against Children and a visiting researcher at the Erasmus School of Economics. She obtained her PhD in 2014 from Lancaster University (UK) on automated deception detection. Previously, she worked as a researcher and/or lecturer in Cambridge (Computer Laboratory), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Social and organisational psychology), and Erasmus Rotterdam (Applied economics). She gained experience with more practical and policy oriented research as a researcher at TNO, where she studied cyber crime and cyber security. She deploys her multidisciplinary background in her research on (dis)honesty and criminal behavior. Sophie is also the founder of Decepticon, the conference on deception and dishonest behavior. She is editor for the Nature journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and she is a member of an expert group (LDM) at the Dutch police. Sophie has been nominated for several national research prices. Her research has been the topic of two international documentaries (BBC Horizon and Curiosity Stream) en is regularly covered in popular media.
Laura Weiss
Dr. Laura Weiss is an assistant professor at the Self-Regulation Lab at Utrecht University. Before this, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Law at the VU University of Amsterdam. Her project focused on eyewitness interviews conducted by the South African police. Laura completed her Master’s degree in Mental Health Promotion and Educational Psychology and her Ph.D. in Positive Psychology at the University of Twente. She has previously conducted qualitative research on the well-being of imprisoned youth and has published on cultural diversity in the experience of meaningful work. For a three-year postdoc position, she went to the North-West University in South Africa. She is interested in cultural differences and aims to conduct research that has practical use in real-life applications.
Simon Oleszkiewicz
Dr. Simon Oleszkiewicz worked as a researcher at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Gothenburg (2016), completed a post-doctorate at Iowa State University (2018), and worked as Associate Professor at the University of Twente (2020). In 2018, Oleszkiewicz received the Early Career Researcher Award from the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL). Oleszkiewicz’s research has largely been funded by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation group (HIG) of the FBI. His project portfolio includes research on interview techniques for intelligence gathering (e.g., the Scharff technique), trust-building strategies, and an examination of undercover interactions. Oleszkiewicz currently works on a CREST funded project on the adaptability of undercover officers, and for the upcoming two years he will work on a HIG funded project to develop an evidence-based training model for disclosing evidence and investigative information to suspects and intelligence sources. The training model will be tested with U.S. law enforcement. Oleszkiewicz has been involved with developing evidence-based training for police and military practitioners in the United States, South Korea, and Scandinavian countries.
Marika Madfors
Marika Madfors worked as a researcher at VU University Amsterdam. She is currently working as a Teaching Fellow at University College Maastricht, where she teaches Psychology & Law as well as skills courses such as argumentation and research methods. In 2018, she obtained her Master’s degree in Forensics, Criminology, and Law from Maastricht University, where she received the university thesis award for her master thesis on the role of law in preventing the risks of artificial superintelligence. She worked with Simon Oleszkiewicz on his project on evidence disclosure in suspect interviewing.
Verena Muckermann
Verena Muckermann holds a B.A. in “Culture, Individual, and Society” and Philosophy (2020) and graduated cum laude from the M.Sc. “International Crimes Conflict and Criminology” at VU University Amsterdam (2021). She currently pursues a M.A. in Social Science “Culture and Person” at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany where she focuses on practices of collective violence. Recently, she was awarded the Gert-Sommer-Prize for Peace Psychology 2022 from the German Peace Psychology Association for her master’s thesis focusing on the justice-related needs of Syrian survivors of international crimes living in Germany.
Verena supported the research project “Eyewitness memory in cross-cultural contexts” as a research assistant as part of the CICJ Research lab during her studies at the VU. She currently continues to support Dylan Drenk’s research focusing on the role of culture and eyewitness evidence in international criminal tribunals. Moreover, she works as a graduate research assistant for the Chair of Science and Technology for Peace and Security (PEASEC) at the Technical University Darmstadt as well as for the Chair of Social Theory and Social Psychology and at the Institute for Development Research and Development Policy, both at Ruhr-University Bochum.
Krista King
Krista King is a PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Previously, she worked as a junior researcher at the Department of Criminology, Faculty of Law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Krista worked on projects engaging with witness statements in cross-cultural contexts and eyewitness evidence provided at the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda. She did her bachelor’s degree in criminology at Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland and the University of North Florida in the US, after which Krista completed her Research Master in Gender Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In her Bachelor thesis, Krista looked into ways in which the contemporary Anglophonic media criminalises Black womanhood. For her master’s thesis, she conducted a literature-based study on the historical criminalisation of Blackness and how this history still prevails in the racialised predispositions within stop-and-search policing in contemporary France, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.